Friday, 12 October 2012

The last few weeks have been a maelstrom of relevations, triggered (in
more ways than one) by the Jimmy Savile scandal. Details of abuse,
grooming, cover ups and a widespread sexism and misogyny that allowed
such things to happen as if unseen have been flooding out and leading
the whole country to stop and examine the situation. There has been more
talked about Jimmy Savile in the past three weeks than he ever deserved
and a lot of soul searching about society, but the one thing everyone
keeps saying is 'why didn't anyone speak up before now?'

We all know the answers. What chance would a girl from an approved
school or Broadmoor have had if she'd spoken up against a man draped
with honours from the British Establishment and Catholic Church and who
spent Christmas with the Prime Minister? None. She wouldn't have been
believed for one second. And so these victims remained abused by the
visibility of their attacker and he carried on unchecked and growing in
confidence with every year.

You shrug and say 'but that's how it was then. Things have changed
now.' And I say that, no, they haven't. Women still live their lives in a
culture where the default setting is not to believe them. And not just
about rape. About everything. This runs on a spectrum of 'you're
lying' to 'are you sure?', taking in destinations such as 'I think
you're overreacting' 'well, I haven't seen anything' and ' why don't we
wait a few months and see what happens?' It happens whenever women try
to report anything that happens to them from a particular Pill causing
problems or periods being painful (it on average takes 8 years to be diagnosed with endometriosis), or their child just not seeming
right in some way, to saying that that comment in the street wasn't a compliment or
that when their partner does certain things it scares them. Their word about
wanting or needing an abortion has to been agreed by two doctors while a
declaration that you don't want kids is always accompanied with the
order that 'you'll change your mind.' Women are constantly seen as
unreliable at best, deceitful and out to destroy someone at worst.

And yet the irony is that the destructiveness of disbelief affects
women primarily. They are the ones who live with the consequences of
being disregarded, maligned and told their word is neither valid nor
valuable. This has the effect of silencing women everywhere in life.
It's very hard to stand up at work and suggest something unknown or
risky with conviction when you're constantly being told you're not even
an expert on yourself, your life and your body. This undermining seeps
out into the rest of society. Men learn that their word is always seen
as more important and often feel cossetted by that protection. Girls,
who are seen to combine the silliness of children with the duplicitity
of grown women are left horribly vulnerable and boys internalise that
being seen to be girlie in anyway is the worst thing that could happen
to them.

Being believed is like being scooped up in the strongest pair of
hands. It's like being attached to a harness and rope while climbing the
unpredictable rockface of life and knowing that you can hug tight or
take a risk and swing out and that you will be fine. It builds
confidence, it forms a barrier than makes it hard for the corrosiveness
of self doubt and loathing to errode. It allows you to pick yourself up
and face life without having to waste time and energy on fighting your
way just to be heard let alone your actions acknowledged. It's vital to
be able to heal and move on from painful paralysing experiences and
unlike complicated interventions, it's free and easy. It just relies on
kindess, humanity and being a decent person with a certain amount of
humility.

I have faced a lot of disbelief in my life. The most striking
example, of course, was trying to report rape. The first time, there was
just a wall of doubt and denial driven by the fact that my attacker's
uncle was well connected and there was a delay in reporting. I'm not
stupid. I knew that not being able to produce forensic evidence would be
a stumbling block. I half knew that reporting wasn't going to go
anywhere, but having been told that what I was saying was unladylike by
the woman at Victim Support (who could barely hold the phone for pearl
clutching) and then having my GP refuse to note the assault on my
medical notes, I needed an acknowledgement, some visible marker of what
had happened. It was too much to comprehend that my whole life had been
turned upside down and yet there was nothing tangible to see. I presume
this is a similar emotion that women who have had miscarriages and
stillbirths feel and why momentoes, photos and death certificates are so
important? I wanted someone I could trust, who was impartial and who
could be proactive to say yes, this happened. I needed to be believed. I
simply couldn't believe this had happened and I needed permission to
let myself start addressing it in order to make sense of it.

Instead I got total hostility, enhanced with sneering and judgement.
I could come to terms with him not being punished as long as they'd
investigated. Investigating is a form of belief. Ultimately I'd have
liked the bastard to face some consequences, but I could more easily
have come to terms with being told 'I'm sorry. We believe that he did
this to you, but unfortunately because we can't find this evidence/the
law doesn't allow/we can't prove it, we can't do anything, but we'll
bear it in mind.' It would have taken less time that the lecture they
gave me and I'd have gone away feeling something had been done, even
though really it hadn't. Call it placebo policing. Call it being half
decent to a traumatised victim. It certainly wouldn't have left me
feeling so angry and helpless and fucked up.

I think I could have coped with that disbelief, and the version
a few months later when the police seemed to believe I'd been raped that time but
not that I deserved anything being done about it, if it was an isolated event, but disbelief
was coming from everywhere and had been for years. Since the age of 14,
I have suffered from nausea almost daily and then strange abdominal
pains. I went to doctors repeatedly and was told it was all in my head,
was I sure I wasn't pregnant?, it was lady trouble, growing pains, just
something I had to live with and a multitude of other disbelieving,
don't give a shit responses. Of course, it wasn't any of those things.
It was gallstones and the offending organ was whipped out in 1996 and
the problem was solved.

Except it wasn't. The nauses remained, now joined by literally gut
wrenching diarrhoea and unexplained pains. After months of strong
painkillers and hospital visits, the pain was found to be secondary
stones. All fixed. Except that 16 years later my life is still dictated
daily by nausea and diarrhoea. At least 9 GPs have disregarded it,
telling me it can't be that bad (despite admissions to A&E on
occasion and extreme weightloss at times), that all women get a bit of a
dodgy tummy at that time of the month, I'm attention seeking, I eat too
much fat/too little fibre, I've only got IBS and even though I'm medicated for both
conditions, I don't really need it but they're just humouring me because
after all it's well documented that I'm mental these days. Desperate
and unable to work because of it, I asked to see a gastroenterolgist for
6 years and was refused time and time agian. I wanted to argue, I
wanted to stand up and say 'listen to me', but having been disbelieved
that I'd been bitten, that I'd been raped, that I was really properly
homeless, that I'd had no real investigation by the police, that I
really really did want to complain about the police, that my drinking
hadn't caused the second rape, that I qualified for benefits, that I
needed psychiatric help, that I was ill, that I was worth being helped,
that I wasn't looking for attention, I just couldn't find my voice for
that. I took the pills and carried on dealing with everything else.

And I met some people along the way who don't ask for explanations
and justifications, but who just believed what I was saying. My
solicitor who backed me to the hilt over my compensation claim and
practically used her buff folders as pom poms as she cheered me on to claim the compensation that was a tangible acknowledge of what had happened. The
therapist at the Chronic Fatigue clinic who convinced me I was ill and
not just imagining it. The employment advisor who heard me say I'd never
work again and who believed me that I felt like that while believing I still had a lot to offer.
Friends who didn't quiz and query and question, but just accepted me
warts and all. And eventually I felt ready to stand up to the GP who was
blocking me and move surgeries. I stormed into the new one fired up and
determined to be believed and was met by no resistance at all, only
concern and help. Within 6 weeks I was sitting in front of a
gastroenterogist, mouth open to defend myself, only to be interrupted by
him and told I had quite definitely got something very wrong with me,
it was no more in my head than the man in the moon and it should have
been sorted years ago.

Like many people who have their gallbladders removed, I suffer from
something called bile salt malabsorption and biliary gastritis which is
basically a fancy way of saying that without anywhere to store bile, the
stuff is sloshing round in huge quantities in innards making them angry
and inflamed and causing terrible nausea and diarrhoea. It's not
serious, but it's not pleasant and the longer you have it unchecked, the
harder it is to control. But none of that really matters. The kindness
and respect and belief of the gastronenterologist confirming what I knew
all along was medicine in itself. That 30 minute consultation did more
for my mental health than the 100 hours of therapy I've had.
All the psychological help in the world isn't much use when everytime
you try to trust yourself and your feelings, it is undermined by
someone's else disbelief. It just makes you more confused, more torn and
feeling under greater attack.

But what happens if the person talking to you knows you're actually
wrong? What if the gastroenterologist had been utterly sure I did have
IBS? What about all those people over the years who knew that my eating
habits were in fact totally fucked up and not normal like I insisted? Or
if you can see that someone is drinking themselves to death? Do you
just take their word for it, show no challenge and believe them no
matter what? Not exactly. Having a belief isn't the same as believing
someone and pushing your belief above all else, even if it's correct,
simply raises the stakes. It makes the person in denial have to spend
their time and energy on battling with you, not dealing with themselves
and looking at their behaviour. It turns genuine concern into a battle
of wills and in repeatedly explicitly telling that person you don't
believe them, you also tell them they can't come to you and talk to you
even things change because you don't trust them. You can express
concern, you can remind the person that you're worried and that they
don't have to put up with things and deserve better, but you will never
help someone get to acceptance faster by disbelieving them. It's
counterproductive.

Nothing pushes my buttons more than that air of disbelief. When you
ask those forensically minded questions about what I did when I was
raped that sound like you need tangible proof over my word, you
disbelieve the biggest thing that's ever happened to me and if you
disbelief the big things in my life, you can't believe the little ones.
You're doubting me to my face and yet expecting me to not only put up
with it but not question you in return. You've put me in an impossible
situation where if I try to prove I'm right, I'm almost trying to prove a
negative. It's like the more you tell someone you're not mad, the
crazier you sound. I can hear myself frantically defending a point so
trivial as to be inconsequential and thinking that I sound mildy
hysterical to myself, let alone anyone else, but unable to stop in a
frantic, out of control way.

It's a trait I'd dearly love to remove from my repetoire. It plunges
me into a vortex of self doubt, anxiety and PTSD, but not only can I
not avoid it, I don't want to lose the knack as it's engrained into the benefits system on which I am completely dependent. To qualify for
sickness benefits, a person (or a panel) will quiz you about the
absolute fucking minutiae of your daily life. A recent tribunal for DLA
saw us spend a good ten minutes on what I'd do with a pork chop and
another five on my tea making skills. No matter how genuine you are,
when someone asks you to go through the making of a hot beverage second
by second, it's impossible not sound like you're lying. Truth does not
respond well to slow motion time and the more you try to correct the
fact it sounds wrong, the worse it gets. It's like trying to walk in a
straight line when pissed. You wobble more when you think about it. For
me it's like being back in the police station. I feel as exposed as when
they were shuffling the photos of my naked body, but the stakes are
higher. It's my home, my sole income, my ability to survive let alone
thrive. It all depends on someone believing me. I'm not optimistic.

I guess all I can do is learn to believe myself. The self fulfilling
prophecy is that after years of being doubted, I really believe myself
or believe in myself. I find it hard to accept that sometimes,
especially in the matters of my own life, I know better than other
people and that generally my instincts have been better than not. But I
don't find it hard to believe in other people. I never apply the same
doubts I have about myself to other victims who come forward and I find
it easy, in fact edifying, to be their cheerleader. And I wonder if
that's how we learn to cope? We throw ourselves into supporting those
whose situations mirror ours and hope that some self belief reflects
back on us and that makes it easier to deal with that constant inbuilt
doubt toward women? Do we gradually create a wave of women who are able
to stand up to that by standing together and sharing belief amongst
ourselves?

I don't know, but I really hope that the discourse round the
Savile victims and the work done by the Mumsnet campaign and hashtag of
#Ibelieveher are starting to change things slowly, but surely. I think
it's obvious that the culture of disbelief creates more chaos long term
than it seeks to calm or ignore and does not serve the majority at all. We need to start reaching out and supporting people who try to tell us things we don't want to be bothered with, no matter what it is. Only then will we not hear the phrase 'just the women' again in a hurry...

About Me

I started this blog as a way to talk to myself as I worked my way toward rebuilding my life after experiencing two rapes. Then other people started reading it too and I realised talking about myself wasn't enough and expanded it to having an opinion on everything, especially women and sexual violence. I want this to be a safe welcoming space so please assume all posts need a trigger warning for rape, PTSD, general trauma related crappiness and bad jokes. I'm thrilled anyone reads it and want everyone to feel welcome, including men who may have been victims. I talk about rape from a woman's perspective as that's my own experience, but don't want to exclude anyone who doesn't feel their experience is the same. Feel free to browse or make comments. These are moderated so any apologist crap hits the bin, but not to boost my ego. Anonymous comments or pseudonyms are fine by me since I only blog anonymously myself. Thanks for reading. I do reward you with the odd lighthearted post as well...